Sharanya asked Amanda Meredith:

Hi Amanda, What was the inspiration behind 'Dark Mountains'?

Amanda Meredith Thanks for the question, Sharanya!

The inspiration struck for Dark Mountains when I was a senior in High School. Our Creative Writing teacher gave us a unique assignment: free-form writing, but the inspiration/subject had to be a plant. We all picked some type of plant (mine was a bluebell), and had to write about it. We could do poetry, an essay, a song, a short story, etc. as long as it included the plant we picked.

I imagined two little kids, best friends: barefoot, muddy, ripped jeans, tangled hair... basically what I looked like playing outside all day in the summer at that age. A frustrated mom when she saw the tears she'd have to mend, the baths she'd have to start. And those two kids pulling out a bouquet of bluebells they'd picked to help ease any punishment they might receive. Mom's eyes softening, a small smile forming, and those kids knowing that they just escaped whatever consequences they would have normally faced.

It was just a short story when I wrote it, and the focus was the flowers, not the children. But it wasn't long before I began to think about that story, who those children were, why they were best friends, what kind of life they lived, and Dark Mountains took off from there.

I've blogged about finding inspiration everywhere and I know that from experience. A random writing assignment at school became the birth of my first published novel. Who knew a tiny flower could have started something so big? Certainly not that 17-year-old high school student. :)

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